During the building of the kit I made a number of detailed modifications, some of them as a result of choosing a prototype that had the sandbox fillers on the top of the tanks, rather than the “clockwork” keyhole in the side of the tanks. However there were numerous other detailed differences between the different locos in the class. So unless by chance we select the exact loco used by the kit designer then there are likely to be differences in the build. I’ll try to collate these changes here to help anyone else contemplating building the kit.

The major one for my chosen prototype is the location of the sandbox fillers, on one batch these were fitted on the top of the water tank rather than the side. Rather than trying to fill the hole in the etching I choose to cut new tank sides out using the etchings supplied as a template.

New tanks sides

I decided to replace the coupling rods with steel etched ones from Slaters, I prefer the colour of steel compared to the nickel etchings supplied, also the bosses seemed over large on the ones supplied with the kit.

Steel Coupling Rods

As built the boiler/firebox height seemed a little low. In the kit this is located on tabs bent up from the water tank inner face. Small packing pieces were made by cutting small squares out of 28thou nickel silver sheet. These pads were then soldered on to the etched support tabs to raise the boiler and firebox up to the required level.

Tank Modifications

The washout plugs on the firebox have a plate over the top of them, so I’ve not bothered using the white metal casting on the inside of the firebox, just keeping the clamping plate. I used a sheet of 5thou nickel sheet, scribe a line parallel to a straight edge, and then using a square mark five centres. Centre pop the centres and scribe out a circle of 1/8″ radius. The centre was then drilled out for the whitemetal clamp and using the scribed lines as a guide emboss four rivets on each plate. I prefer to emboss the rivets before cutting out as it minimises any distortion. The discs are then cut out, filed to shape and then bent around 3/16″ steel bar. I know there’s only four required but cutting out circles I always seem to get one wrong, this way I can discard the worst one.

Making washout plugs

The coal plate at the rear on the top of the coal rails was the wrong shape, the corners are bevelled rather than rounded.

Coal rail modifications

The number of vertical bars on rear spectacle plate is wrong, the kit has markings for 5 vertical bars where as there should be 6. Unfortunately I found this out after I’d built up the cab so I’ve left it as is.

Rear window

The step on the rear of the bunker is in the wrong place. This was quite tricky as there is a half etched location recess that needed filling as can be seen on the previous photo. The supplied etching is also the wrong shape. The step is an invert U shape, whereas the supplied etching is for an L shape like a cab step. The replacement was fashioned from a strip of nickel silver sheet.

The buffers were replaced with sprung units from Slaters.

The etched brakes blocks were replaced with ones cut from tufnol sheet, I’m never too keen on putting etched metal blocks close to the wheels it just seems like a recipe for creating shorts. So the tufnol acts as an insulator and gives a bit of depth to the blocks.

I wasn’t happy with using the whitemetal casting for the cab roof as the join to the side sheets would be visible. I worked up a replacement from nickel silver sheet, see the main build article for details.

New lamp irons were built using nickel silver sheet, the etched items just seemed a little thin, also the top ones involved folding etched items which I couldn’t get right so I just found it easier making my own.

There have been a few articles in MRJ which cover a lot of the variations in the prototype and were invaluable in the building of this model.

With the rolling chassis complete attention was turned to making up the tender body. The main tender body is a resin casting, the original casting supplied in the kit was the wrong one, a small 2500 gallon...

Table of Contents Dummy Side FramesReplacement Inner ChassisBuilding the chassisReplacement brakesRolling Tender Chassis This series of posts is intended to document the build of a Midland 3F loco and tender as supplied by JLTRT. It...